Journal Entry 18: Lament

Lowen is dead. I
killed him. Accidentally, in self defense. I didn’t intend to kill him. If I
hadn’t have, he would have killed me. Very likely. Maybe.

Maybe I didn’t have to
kill him. I could have just subdued him or restrained him. I don’t think he was
trying to kill me, but he might have. He probably would have. He was trying to
bring me enough pain to see if it would make me jaunt. Which I don’t think it
would have. I don’t think he would have known when to stop. The man had gone
insane, I’m pretty sure.

Okay, I need to bury
him. I’ll bury him over by the marglet trees. Definitely not by the kenn trees.
No, no, no. I’m too weak to lift him. I’ll have to drag him, so…

I know it’s not very
respectful to bury you naked, but I could really use the clothes. You
understand.

Okay, let’s try this
again.

(sound
of body dragging, JANUAE moaning with pain)

A FEW DAYS LATER

That took far too
long. I had nothing to dig with. I tried using a spike from a kenn tree, that
was no good. It took me three days to hunt down and kill a griffalo to use its
leg bone. I tried using a tusk but I ended up absorbing the poison into my
hands, and I was too sluggish to dig. I lost a day. But I got it done. It took
the entire following day. So today I need to rest, nurse these stab wounds. If
they get infected… I’ll just have to go to the lake, keep them clean. I just
don’t have the energy today.

I keep going back to
it. I keep asking myself what I could have done differently. I could have used
my force esotery to push him away. Was I inflamed with rage? Had he begun to
drive me mad as well? Was I slamming him against the ground to get him to stop,
or because I couldn’t stop? I can’t say I hated the man. Or did I hate him but
couldn’t admit it to myself? No, that can’t be. I’ve never hated anyone. Many
people I have had a strong dislike for, but never hated.

And I’ve never killed
anyone.

He didn’t deserve to
die. By my hand. I killed him. I have to live with the fact that I killed him.
Maybe he’s better off. What kind of life is this, where every few days resets
to the way it was before? Seeing all those places where you’d want to go but
never able to reach them. It’s no wonder he lost his mind. Strangely enough, my
arrival gave him something to live for. And I took that life away.

(pause)

Well, no sense in
being maudlin. I cannot change what happened. Something I have to live with, I
suppose. Let me busy myself, find something to distract me. I need to keep my
mind fresh and engaged, something Lowen clearly neglected to do. I’ll do
whatever I need to to ensure I don’t end up the way he did. So… what now?

A VAGUE NUMBER OF DAYS LATER

There’s a monotony here
unlike any I’ve experienced. It’s one thing when you are confined to a limited
number of activities or experiences, but it’s another to watch everything
revert back to the way it was a few days ago. With Lowen here at least he
offered a bit of stimulation. Now it is just the same animals in the same
places as they were a week ago, the same fruit in the same places on the same
trees with the same degree of ripeness. And no numenera to speak of, if you don’t
count the situation as a whole.

I try to change things
up despite the repetition. Some days I’ll try spearfishing using a spike from a
kenn tree or a bone. Other times I’ll look for the highest pieces of fruit in a
tree and challenge myself to climb high enough to reach it. Once I played
runbird with a stampede of griffalo, seeing how long I could remain standing in
their path before jumping out of the way.

It’s been a couple
weeks since… was it a couple of weeks? I’m beginning to lose track of time…
suffice it to say some time after the event that changed everything here, I
decide to pay a visit to Lowen’s grave. I wander over to the marglet trees and
spend quite some time wandering around, trying to remember where I buried him.
I was sure of the spot. Or I thought I was. The copse of these trees is not
that large, so it had to be somewhere in the general-

Wait… was the grave
affected by the reset? I can’t imagine how it could have been. Lowen’s body did
not originate here. It should have not been affected. Shouldn’t it?

Maybe his death reset?
Is he still alive? I have to entertain the possibility! I begin to search for
him, checking within the groves of trees. I shoo the herding animals out of the
way to see if they might be blocking my view of him. I decide to swim, looking
for him somewhere in the lake, even diving below the surface. I spend hours
searching, wandering past the reset boundary so many times I would have lost
count had I been counting. I shout his name with each area I search until my
voice grows thin and tired. Eventually as night begins to creep in I surrender
and stop looking.

I’m tired, and the
concession is carried in with my exhaustion. Lowen did not come back with the
reset. Maybe it was his life force that anchored him here, but once he died
this land simply swept away any evidence of him.

‘Once he died’. Once
he was killed. I killed him. I killed Lowen. I killed a man who desperately
wanted to go home. He just wanted to leave and was trying anything he possibly
could to make that happen. When I came here, I brought hope with me. I gave him
hope. Then I stole it from him. Now I’ll be finishing out the sentence he was
serving here. It’s just as well. This is the sentence I serve for taking his
life. He will only see justice if I am never to jaunt away from this place.